Breathing New Life, Flying High
by piperkathleenpotter
Summary: As Sam and Quinn Evans are expecting their first child, they decide to take a trip up to a family cabin in the mountains. Quinn attempts to write her first play, and Sam has a project of his own.
1. Chapter 1

**Week 1**

Sam

When he makes his way into the bathroom Monday morning, the half of his mind that has churned into wakefulness centered on inventory at the comic book store, he finds that his wife is already standing by the sink, and she is crying.

"Quinn?" he says, brain now fully engaged and offering up horrible scenarios—she's been vomiting blood, she discovered a lump, she's in pain somehow. "What's wrong?"

It takes Sam a moment to comprehend the fact that even though there are tears sluicing down her cheeks, Quinn is smiling. "Baby," she begins, but then doesn't say anything else.

"What?"

She gives a wet, hiccupping laugh. "No," she says, and offers him the slim white stick. "_Baby._"

He stares at it, at the little pink cross, he understand that she wasn't using a term of endearment, but instead a description of a person. Their person. A person that he has thought about, dreamed about, since before they even got married.

"Oh," Sam breathes, and it seems like his voice is floating high above him, like he's at the bottom of a well and he isn't even the one speaking at all. "Oh."

After a few minutes, he focuses, blinks, and notices that Quinn is looking at him with her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth is trembling, molding into an uncertain expression. "Are you—you're happy, right?" she presses, and Sam just stares at her, because he honestly can't believe she even needs to ask that question.

He reaches past her to set the test down carefully on the sink, like it's some precious relic, and then takes hold of Quinn with equal caution, winding one arm around her waist and bringing his free hand up to delicately cup her cheek.

"You keep making me eat my words," he says, and she looks at him as if he's just told her that _The Dark Knight _was the worst superhero movie ever made—with a mixture of concern for his sanity as well as a dose of plain confusion.

"When you said you'd marry me, I thought that was the happiest day of my life," Sam continues, dipping his head to brush his lips gently along the curve of Quinn's jaw. "And then when we actually got married, I thought _that _was the happiest day of my life."

Quinn is giggling now.

"And now, I'm going to have to say it again, even though I know there's going to be another day—oh, about nine months from now—that's going to trump this one," he murmurs. "This is the happiest day of my life, Quinn."

He's working on that spot just above her collarbone that he knows she loves when she says, "Boy or girl?"

Sam shakes his head, partly in response and partly to nuzzle her neck. "I don't care."

"Of course you do."

"Don't."

"Do."

"Sam."

"Quinn."

"Samuel."

"That's not fair. I don't have an equivalent for that."

"So tell me what you want."

"Babe, I really don't care."

"You do, too. It's imbued in your DNA to care."

"What?"

"Sperm determines sex."

He sighs and lifts his head, looking her square in the eye, and for a second, he forgets what he was going to say.

Being with Quinn has given him a particular appreciation for hazel eyes—the way they range from chocolate to honey to a mossy green, and sometimes he swears the colors change based on her mood, even though she told him one time that it's just something about light and reflection. He obviously believes that hers are especially beautiful, which for some reason is a compliment guaranteed to bring color to her cheeks.

"I wanted blue eyes when I was growing up," she told him, on maybe their fourth or fifth date. "I've always thought they were so pretty."

She'd leaned forward across the table. Sam remembers his hands beginning to tremble as she got closer, how the only scent he could breathe in was the vanilla that clung to her skin. Balancing on her elbows, she brought her face very close to his, until the tips of their noses touched, at which point Sam hadn't been able to breathe at all.

"Yep," she'd husked. "Absolutely gorgeous."

Sam clears his throat as his words finally come back to him. "All I want," he says, pausing to kiss her gently but fully, "is for them to look just like their mom."

/

**Week 6**

Quinn

_**Scene One, Act Two**_

_(A hospital room, lit dimly by the moonlight falling through the rain-washed window. MELISSA, a tall, athletic young woman in her early twenties is sitting in a chair by the bedside of her younger sister, ALICE, who is hooked up to several machines and an IV.)_

_MELISSA_

_(takes ALICE'S hand)_

_Hey, you. I know you can hear me. And I know you're hanging on for me, but you don't have to anymore. _

_MELISSA stands up and paces to the window, turning her back to ALICE'S bed as if she's trying to hide the tears that are beginning to form. _

Quinn chews her lip and rereads what she's just written, her fingers dancing restlessly just above the keyboard. She isn't crazy about it, but then, this is the most she's written for days. Act one was a slow process, setting up characters and their relationships to each other. She had hoped act two would be easier, would flow better, but so far, it's been a constant dance between the cursor and "Scene One, Act One" as the backspace key brings them together and Quinn's attempts at writing pulls them apart again.

She's been acting in the New Haven theater circuit since she graduated, mostly landing lead roles for the past few years. She just wrapped up a spot as Abigail Williams in the production of _The Crucible, _and when she mentioned to Sam over dinner how she always dreaded the upcoming audition process, he shoved around on his plate and peeked up at her.

"Why don't you take a break?" he'd said tentatively. "I—I mean, we have enough money, between the comic book store and, uh, savings, so—and I—remember that accident you had on _A Glass Menagerie? _When you sprained your wrist? You have to be careful now, Quinn."

"Okay," she said, surprising him; and then, surprising herself, "I think I'll try writing a play."

A part of her has always wanted to be a writer, the part that loved the shelter books offered, the part that had been loved the lyrics of a song first and the melody later. So she sat down at her computer, a green 17" monster she'd had since college, and so far had…

A whole act.

Now, a little over a month into her pregnancy, she hasn't started to show yet, but other symptoms have begun to show themselves—a persistent ache in her lower back, a slight swelling of her ankles, ridiculously tender breasts, and, of course, the god awful morning sickness.

Sam, the angel that he is, is always there to hold back her hair and then carry her back to bed, to bring her ginger ale and crackers or hot tea, to rub her back or her feet. He goes into work late almost every day.

"Sam," she croaked earlier. "You're going to be late."

He delivered that devastating half-smile, the one that was a huge contributing factor to her being pregnant in the first place, the one that has always sent a current of heat up her spine. "Babe," he says, "I'm the owner. If anybody can be late, it's me."

She rolls her chair away from the desk and moves herself along by dragging her heels on the carpet, rolling down the hall toward the kitchen. Quinn stands up at the threshold, wincing when her knees pop, which is something that happened so often when she was pregnant with Beth that it sometimes sounded like she was walking on bubble wrap.

Beth.

Quinn smiles faintly at the thought of her firstborn daughter, who almost shattered her eardrum when she told her over the phone a few weeks before. She'd been able to hear Shelby laughing in the background, telling her to use her inside voice.

She grabs a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food out of the freezer and plops back down in the desk chair to eat it. So far, she hasn't had a specific craving for anything; eight years ago, carrying Beth, she'd eaten pickles and barbecue chips together, as often as she could, making a sandwich out of two chips and a slice of pickle.

When she's dug through half the pint, she puts it back and pads up the stairs to her room, intending to curl up in bed with the Dean Koontz novel that Sam checked out from the library for her. It's something he does that she especially loves—the library is across the street from his store, and on his lunch break, he'll walk over and pick out a few books that he thinks she'll like. He knows her so well that he has rarely been wrong.

Quinn is under the covers, propped up on the extra pillows that Sam insists she sleep on now, and is in the process of sinking into _Life Expectancy_—which she thinks is a little ironic—when her cell phone rings. She reaches over and presses the button to pick up the call, without bothering to check the caller ID.

"Hi, Sam," she says, and she hears his chuckle, hushed and crackly over the phone line.

"Hi, baby. How'd you know it was me?"

He must step outside, because the static fades and his voice comes through better. Quinn smiles faintly and closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the headboard.

"Wifely instinct," she says, when the real reason is that for the past six weeks, he's called every hour on the hour to check up on her, although he pretends like he has a reason to call each time to keep from injuring her pride.

She figured out what he was doing by the third call on the first day, but instead of feeling coddled, she just feels comforted.

Sam hums in response, and then says, "There was this girl in here that reminded me of you today."

Quinn grins. "What, was she divinely beautiful, too?"

Her husband laughs. "No," he says. "But then, no one is as beautiful as you."

Even alone, heat creeps up her cheeks, and she giggles like a schoolgirl. "So what was it then?"

"She does the same thing you do when you're reading—the way you chew on a lock of your hair when you get to a really good part, you know? She had this totally choice copy _The Amazing Spiderman._"

"You watch me read?" she asks, and she thinks of all those times where she'd sworn his eyes were on her, but whenever she looked up at him, he would always be absorbed in something else with the barest hint of a smile on his face.

"Yeah," he answers, and she can hear that smile now. "It's how I know what books you like. I watch your face to see whether you're into it or not."

She snuggles down into the pillows, a smile of her own curling across her lips, her eyes slowly sliding shut again at the soothing rhythms of his voice. "And here I thought you were psychic."

"Sorry to disappoint you, babe."

"You could never," Quinn says quietly, almost slurring, turning her cheek into the pillow.

"I know. Go to sleep Quinn."

"I'm not…"

"Yeah, you are. I'll see you when I get home. I love you."

"Love you, too."

When she's asleep a few minutes later, she dreams a simple dream about Sam curled up beside her, his hand resting gently on her stomach, and when she wakes up, her dream has come true.


	2. Chapter 2

**Week 12**

Sam

Even more than he loves to watch Quinn read, Sam enjoys watching her sleep.

He's always been a bit of an early bird, not to the degree where he's up and showered by 5 a.m., but just someone who seems to be the first to wake up. When his family lived in the motel, when it was him, Stacy, and Stevie all crammed in one bed, Sam would wake up to find one sibling on each side, curled into him for warmth and comfort, the susurration of his family's breathing echoing like the rush of the ocean in the small room.

Anyway, he is usually awake before Quinn is, even with her morning sickness. At some point during the night, she rolled over to face him, and their noses are less than a millimeter apart on the pillow. He admires the contrast of her long, dark eyelashes against the creamy skin of her cheek, the rosy tint to her cheeks, the way her lips are slightly parted.

Sam traces the familiar, beloved planes of her face with his fingertips, completely enamored all over again by the fact that this is _his _wife, even though she could have had anybody else. He was the one she'd walked toward in that spectacular white dress—which looked, he thinks, even more amazing on the floor of their honeymoon suite.

His own father, Quinn's now father-in-law, had walked her down the aisle, as she hasn't spoken to Russell Fabray in seven years. There are pictures of Quinn and Dwight in the vestibule, the older man making her laugh—or maybe just engendering laughter—with the Matthew McConaughey impression that is only a hair better than his son's, but in his memory, as the two of them approach, Sam can only see her.

Dwight had placed Quinn's hand in Sam's, and he could smell her perfume, which is as distinct now in recollection as it was a little over a year ago. She was trembling, and he squeezed her hands tightly, eliciting a squeeze in return. "Love you," he mouthed, and she laughed, mouthing back, "I know."

The minister had been young, maybe mid-thirties, and had borne a remarkable if not slightly disturbing resemblance to Mr. Schuester. Every now and then, when Sam dreams about the wedding, the minister _is _Schue, and sometimes gives them an assignment of finding a perfect song for a wedding ceremony.

In one of these dreams, Sam had performed Poker Face, and woke up feeling oddly guilty.

When he'd kissed Quinn for the first time as his wife, it was like he had swallowed the sun—more than warmth, he felt truly golden, as if surely his happiness must be flooding from his every pore in the most amazing light.

She looks like Sleeping beauty now, her thick blonde hair spread like a shawl around her head, that lovely, rounding body wrapped up cozily in their comforter. Sam brushes his fingers down the slope of her throat, coming back up to admire her jaw with the pad of his thumb.

He knows she's awake when she pretends to bite him as his fingertips traverse up to her mouth. "Good morning, beautiful," he says, and she, probably no more than half joking, growls at him.

Sam slides his hand under the blanket, pressing his palm gently to Quinn's stomach, which has just begun to curve. "And good morning to you, Fiona."

Quinn's nose wrinkles. She still hasn't opened her eyes yet. "No."

Every morning, Sam says good morning to their baby, and gives it a name, alternating between those traditionally used for a boy and those traditionally used for a girl. Sometimes, he attempts unisex names—Bailey, Payton, Taylor—but Quinn almost always vetoes those.

The ones that make her smile have been diligently written down on a notepad Sam has taken to keeping in his beside drawer. So far, there is:

Amelia.

Liam.

Charlotte.

Aidan.

Sophie.

Ferris (for her favorite movie, _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_).

And Julie or Julia.

"Aw, why not?" he says, mentally crossing Fiona off the list.

"Fiona was the name of the ogre-wife in Shrek."

"Yeah. And also that singer from the nineties, the one you like…Fiona Apple."

"I wouldn't be thinking of her. I'd be thinking of Mrs. Shrek."

At this moment, Quinn's eyes finally snap open, and she rolls out of bed, not even bothering to rise form a half-crouch, scuttling for the bathroom. He hears the raw, wet sound of her retching and his stomach curls, not from nausea of his own but from sympathy. Following her, he carefully gathers her hair at the nape of her neck with one hand and rubs her back with the other.

"Mmmph," she groans, and when she lifts her head, he moves away from her to wet a wash cloth in the sink and hands it to her.

She wipes her mouth and he helps her to her feet so she can rinse her mouth out and brush her teeth. Quinn half-smiles at him around the tooth brush.

"Oo don'alf to ov-hur."

He cracks up, and waits for her to spit and rinse before he says, "What was that, babe?"

Quinn sticks her tongue out at him and then answers, "I said, you don't have to hover."

Sam can't help it. Even after six years together, one year of marriage, self-doubt still sweeps through his stomach like a torrential downpour. "Do you, uh, want me to go?"

She sighs, and leans forward for a freshly minty kiss. "Baby, no. But it's still early. You should go back to bed."

"_You _should go back to bed," Sam counters, swinging her into his arms as carefully as he can, and she sighs, tucking her head against his shoulder like a bird against its wings. "I have work."

Once he has her settled in bed with a cup of tea and a book, he leaves the house, wincing at the blast of heat that assaults him as he opens the door. Even in Connecticut, mid-August isn't exactly a fair weather time of the year.

They live in a nice but simple two-story brick house just outside of New Haven, where they both work, Quinn at the New Haven Theater Company and Sam at his own comic book store, the Evansger's Tower.

The Tower, as most people usually call it, obviously isn't a tower at all, although that would be completely awesome. It's one room, but not small, divided into two parts by the counter where the cash register and action figures are, and where Sam, or one of his three part-time employees, helps people.

As someone who has loved comics all his life, running his very own store is a dream come true for Sam. He loves being surrounded by people who are just as enthusiastic about them as he is, loves seeing a customer's face when they find an issue they've been looking for or one they never even knew existed. He's especially touched when a kid will run up to the counter to show him, as if he doesn't already know what's in stock, because they are just so excited that they have to spread the feeling around.

He unlocks the grille that protects the storefront at night, and then the front door, propping it open to allow any breeze that may come up to enter the store. Sam has just taken up his post behind the counter when his cell phone vibrates against his hip.

Checking the caller ID, Sam raises an eyebrow and answers it. "Hey, Dad. What's up?"

"Hey, Sammy," Dwight Evans says, his voice a little too loud as usual, because somehow he still doesn't grasp that you don't need to compensate for how small the phone is by yelling into it. "Your mom and I just wanted to invite you and our daughter-in-law over for dinner. Your brother and sister miss you guys."

Sam grins at the use of the title instead of Quinn's name. It's how Dwight refers to her when he thinks they've been away too long.

Almost immediately after they got married, Quinn and Sam's mother, Mary, began talking about the Evans moving to Connecticut to be with them. Sam remembers Quinn researching school districts for Stevie and Stacy, job openings for his parents. Sam found it endearing, until she told him why, at which point it broke his heart just a little.

"I've never really had a family before," she said, looking at him over the top of that gigantic laptop she has. "It's nice. I want them closer."

Now, Sam says, "I'll have to ask Quinn, but I'm sure we'll be there."

"How's she doing?" asks Dwight. "Is she showing yet?"

"Yep," Sam answers blissfully, thinking of the gently rounded stomach that is just barely visible beneath Quinn's shirts. "A little bit, but it's—"

"Beautiful, huh?"

He closes his eyes, pictures his wife, wearing one of his t-shirts and not much else, her burgeoning belly evident just beneath the symbol of Captain America's shield.

"Yeah," he says. "Beautiful."

/

**Week 12**

Quinn

"Let me see you, let me _see _you!"

As soon as they're in the door, Mary Evans crushes Quinn to her chest, hugging her so tightly that she expels the air from her lungs. Her arms flail weakly before they land around her mother-in-law's waist.

"Mom," Sam's laughing voice floats over Quinn's shoulder. "Give her some air, why don't you?"

"Oh," huffs Mary impatiently, but sets her back by the shoulders to get a good look at her. "Oh, honey, you look absolutely wonderful. You have that glow."

She feels Sam's arms wrap around her waist from behind and he drops a kiss onto her cheek. "I told you it wasn't just me," he teases, and she pretends to dig an elbow into his stomach.

Down the hall, a door slams, and there's a muffled rat-tat-tat of running feet on carpet. Stacy screams and Sam yells back, and Mary tugs Quinn safely out of the way as Stacy hurtles toward Sam, her twin brother following at a statelier sprint.

This is one of the things she adores most about Sam—not just the love he has for his family, but particularly the way he treats his siblings. She remembers helping him babysit in the motel, how he would pick Stevie up and tuck him under his arm like a football, running him around the room so he could feel like he's Superman; and how he let Stacy use his hair to learn how to do a French braid as Quinn braided hers.

Sam drops to one knee to squeeze Stacy as tightly as he can, and she has her arms wound so tightly around his neck that they look as though they're fused together. Behind her, Stevie peers shyly up at Quinn, and she smiles at him.

At six, he and Sam favored each other. Now, at twelve, going through his first growth spurt, his palms and shoulders broadening, the resemblance is so striking that it honestly looks as though someone shrunk Sam.

It makes her wonder how their baby will look. She's been picturing a child that's almost all Sam, especially his eyes, that endearing mouth of his, with a few hints of her—the eyelashes that people fawn over, the eyebrows that for some reason earn her compliments, the cheekbones that she was proud of once she unearthed them from Lucy Caboosey's face.

Mary takes her by the hand as they head for the dining room, and it feels incredibly natural, as if she's been a part of this family all her life. "How's the morning sickness?" Mary asks. "It's not too awful, is it?"

"It's getting a little better," Quinn says, squishing her mouth up. "I still can't be in the kitchen when Sam cooks, you know, because the smells are too strong—"

Dwight's voice drifts down the hall, playfully incredulous. "Sweet girl, if you're letting my son cook, strong smells are the least of your worries."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Good boy you are, but a culinary artiste, you are not."

"Don't pull a Yoda on me when you're being insulting."

"Right, sorry."

Winking at Quinn, Mary sighs, "Our boys are a couple pieces of work, aren't they?"

"That they are," Quinn agrees, and Sam sticks his tongue out at her.

She blows him a kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

**Week 16**

Sam

"What do you think about this one?"

He looks up from the invoices he's brought home and sees Quinn holding up a red-and-white floral pattern dress on a wire hanger, and he sighs. "Babe, you know—"

"I swear to God, Samuel, if the words, _you know I think you look beautiful no matter what _come out of your mouth, I'll unwrap this hanger and stick it someplace very sensitive. I'm pregnant, I'm cranky, and we're going to be late."

She looks adorably fierce, and Sam snares his bottom lip between his teeth to keep himself from laughing. "I liked the purple one better," he admits. "Purple is my favorite color on you."

Quinn raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Sam is stretched out on the bed, his papers on his lap, and he moves them aside, holding out his arms for her. She lays the dress against the battered armchair Dwight gifted them from what he called "the original Evans home" and crawls on the bed next to him, curling up against his side with her head on his chest.

"Yeah," he says, pressing his lips against her hair. "But then, you know what I think you look sexiest in."

His wife giggles, and she delivers a light kiss to the base of his throat. "Nothing?"

Smiling, Sam draws his hands over the curve of Quinn's stomach, which is significantly more pronounced now that she's entering her fourth month. "Well, wearing nothing _does _suit you," he agrees, which earns him a fresh round of giggling. "But that's not what I meant."

She props herself up on an elbow, stroking his face lightly with her free hand. Sam closes his eyes for a moment at the scintillating sensation of her touch, still not quite able to believe, especially after everything it took to get here, that she's his. "God, I love you," he murmurs, and smiles faintly when he feels her mouth press against his.

"I love you, too," she says, and when he opens his eyes, her face is still only inches away, and, with the soft lights of their bedroom turning her long veils of hair into a halo, his first thought is, _angel._

"So what do you think I look sexiest in?" Quinn presses, although she knows, because he's made it very clear multiple times.

"My clothes," he says, and she tugs playfully on his shirt. "God, especially my button-downs."

She hums thoughtfully and rolls off of him. The rush of cooler air that devours her body heat as soon as she leaves makes him wince and shiver. He sits up as she dashes into their closet, craning his neck to see what she's picking out.

"Babe?"

She shuts the door and he pouts, which she probably senses, because her voice squeezes under the crack in the door: "Hold on a second, Sam. I'm improvising here."

A few minutes later, the door opens, and Sam sits up, dropping his feet to the floor, curling his toes into the carpet. The collar of a blue chambray is loose around her throat, and she has the tails tucked into a blue and yellow skirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal her slender, lovely forearms.

Quinn gives him a magician's flourish, spreading both arms wide and twirling her hands. "What do you think?"

He stands up and cross the room toward her, intoxicated by the way the scent of her perfume and his own cologne are mixing with his shirt against her skin. Laying his hands on her hips, Sam draws her to him and gives her a kiss. "Have I mentioned that I love you lately?" he asks.

She draws her eyebrows together in an exaggerated thoughtful face. "Uh," she drawls, "I think so. But I'm always open to hearing it again."

"I love you," he says, kissing the tip of her nose.

"I—"

"I love you," he says again, dropping a kiss just above her right eyebrow.

"Yeah, I—"

"I love you." A kiss just above her left eyebrow.

"Sam—"

"I love you." Another on her chin.

"We're going to—"

"I love you." Another at the pulse point beneath her jaw.

She laughs and holds him at arms' length. "I _know,_" she says. "I love you, too. But my mom's flight has probably landed by now, and we've got to go or we'll be late picking her up. Not to mention our dinner reservations."

Sam slips on a tie and his feet into shoes, and helps Quinn down the stairs, even though she insists she doesn't need it. She probably doesn't, but as Sam tells her, one arm around her waist and his free hand cupping her elbow, he's not going to take any chances.

When they arrive at the airport less than half an hour later, Quinn is positively boucning in her seat with excitement. As soon as Sam is parked, she squeals, childlike, and is out of the car in seconds, scurrying across the sidewalk in front of the airport toward her mother.

He exits the car after her, hands slightly extended if she should trip, and is there when she almost collides with Judy.

Sam is lucky enough to be one of the few people, it seems, who genuinely loves his mother-in-law—not just affection or a half-hearted ability to grin and bear it when she comes to visit—but a genuine love, almost as much as he loves his own mother. Having never met Russell Fabray, he is reluctant to pass judgement on the man, but someone who would cheat on an amazing woman like Judy, not to mention abandoning a daughter as wonderful as Quinn, surely has his priorities out of whack.

"Sammy," Judy says fondly, clasping Sam's face between her hands and standing up on tiptoes to kiss his forehead. "You're getting more handsome every minute, I swear."

He grins and bends down to give his mother-in-law a peck on the cheek. "Are you getting younger?" he teases. "Last time I saw you, you looked like Brooke Shields. Now you look like Blake Lively."

Quinn sighs overdramatically, hand resting on her stomach. "If you two are done flirting…"

Reaching for her, pulling her tight against his chest, Sam kisses his wife chastely enough not to incur wrath from her later about kissing in front of her mother, but with just the barest frisson of heat as he trails his fingertips up and down her arms, a brief touch, to let her know there is no one else he'd ever flirt with but her.

At dinner, she has to use the bathroom frequently, apologizing each time she excuses herself with a slight wrinkle of her nose. Just before dessert, she ducks away from the table again, and Judy lays a hand on Sam's arm.

"You're going to be the best father," she says, and by the ambient candlelight flickering on the table, Sam can see a sheen of tears in Judy's eyes. "My Quinny is so lucky to have you."

"On the contrary," Sam answers gently, layering his hand on top of hers, "I'm definitely the lucky one."

/

**Week 16**

Quinn

She's in the shower after dinner, letting the shampoo rinse from her hair, when she hears the bathroom door open. Her lips quirk up, and without opening her eyes or lifting her face from the spray, she reaches out and tugs back the shower curtain, allowing Sam easier access.

His broad palms sluice water off her hips as he pulls her close, and she can feel the silken impression of his lips along the curve of her throat. "Hi, baby," she husks, and he grins against her collarbone.

"You're so sexy right now," he says, almost growling, fingertips skimming along her thigh, and Quinn pulls back, pretending to be offended.

"Aren't I always sexy?"

"Very," Sam assures her eagerly, pulling her back into his arms again. "Remember that time we were vacationing with your mom and Frannie's family in Cannes?"

At this, Quinn gives a very unladylike screech of laughter, collapsing against Sam's shoulder. He nuzzles her neck, his low chuckle seeming to reverberate in her bones.

The summer after Sam's senior year of high school, Judy had invited them to her grandfather's chateau in Cannes, a beautiful house with creeping ivy along one wall and a wide deck in the back that faced a wide lawn sweeping down to a copse of trees, the waterfront glittering in the distance.

They had managed to get into Quinn's room before the proverbial storm broke, Sam hauling Quinn easily into his arms, urging her to wrap her legs around his waist. Aiming for the bed, he'd missed, and they ended up against the closet door instead.

By the time it was over, both of them panting and spent on the floor, one of the hinges of the door was broken and the doorknob was hanging loose.

"Oh," Quinn says. "Or the time in your dorm room."

Sam lifts his head, his face crinkling into the smile that has become the center of her universe, her favorite smile in the world. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Poor Dave."

She'd visited Sam for the first time at Kent State, where he sought a degree in business, while his roommate, Dave, was a theater major like Quinn. He told them he would be out all night, because his drama class was preparing for a performance of _Macbeth, _although he referred to it, in a stage whisper, as "the Scottish play".

With a flamboyant wink, Dave said, "Don't bother hanging a tie on the door, Sam. I'll just assume that's what you're doing."

Since he'd come back to the room at four in the morning, Quinn is sure that Dave expected them to be asleep—what he found when he let himself in, though, was Sam and Quinn tangled with each other, so absorbed that they didn't notice him until he tripped leaving the room, clearing Sam's desk of most of its surface before slamming the door behind him.

He kisses her, moving one hand up to cup her cheek, his fingers splayed, warm and gentle, across her skin. "You're the sexiest, most beautiful woman in the world," he says. "Every day. But especially right now. I love seeing you like this."

"Wet?" Quinn says, and Sam's lips twitch at the double meaning before he shakes his head.

"Pregnant," he answers. "Pregnant with my baby. I can't stop thinking about you. Or touching you," he adds, with a grin so mischievous he reminds her a little of Peter Pan.

He leans down and presses his lips against her throat again, gently biting, and Quinn arches into him, her soft whimper lost in the muffled roar of the shower. "God, Quinn," Sam sighs, bordering on a moan, and when two of his fingers slip inside her, Quinn can't help but curse loud enough to be heard.

She feels him smile, and he looks up at her. "Let's get to the bed," he murmurs.

Sam reaches past her to turn off the shower, keeping one arm around her waist as he helps her out of the tub, wrapping a towel snugly around her body, nuzzling and kissing at the nape of her neck, saying, "I want you, I want you."

When he has her on the bed, he's even more exceptionally gentle than usual, his mouth and hands skimming over her with an almost agonizing softness. Finally, they're rocking together, his moans muffled in her hair as he buries his face against her head, hands gripping the headboard above them to give himself leverage.

They fall asleep still wound around each other, Sam's head nestled on her shoulder, her leg in between his, their hands entangled. She doesn't quite remember what she dreams about when she wakes up in the morning, but she knows he was there, so it's all that matters.


	4. Chapter 4

**Week 20**

Sam

She hasn't said so, but Sam knows the writing isn't going well.

If Quinn feels like she's failing, she turns inward, becomes recalcitrant if you do manage to get a word out of her, and has a perpetual scowl knotting her eyebrows together and twisting her mouth. Sam remembers this from when she was still in her wheelchair and going to physical therapy every week, when she would go through weeks with little to no progress and sit in the passenger seat of his car, her lips tight and her arms crossed so tightly that she shook.

She doesn't look quite this bad now, as she sits next to him in bed with her laptop open in front of her, but it's far too close for his tastes. Every few minutes, she huffs with frustration and lays her finger against the backspace key for several seconds at a time, and then spears her hands with her hair, giving the computer such a look that it seems like it should be on fire.

"Babe," Sam says, reaching over to rub her back with one hand. "You need to relax. The baby—"

"The baby is fine," Quinn interrupts, her teeth set so that she looks oddly like a lioness about to pounce. "The mommy is getting frustrated."

He sighs. "Come here."

Moving the laptop onto the nightstand, Sam flaps his hands at her. "Scooch."

"What?"

"_Scooch._"

She gives another little huff and scoots forward on the bed until Sam has room to crawl behind her and settle her between his legs. "What are you doing?" she says, trying to crane her neck to look at him, but he gently tips her face forward.

He laughs. "Don't you trust me?"

Tipping her head back against his shoulder, where she can more easily look him in the eye, Quinn says, "Implicitly."

Sam drops a light kiss onto her mouth. "Good. Now sit up."

When she's settled, Sam wraps his fingers around her shoulders, digging his thumbs into the tense bands of muscles of his wife's back. She gives a low drone of pleasure, sinking back against him, and he barely muffles his chuckle in a cough.

"See?" he says, moving his hands lower, knowing which places on her body are the tensest, knowing where she needs him the most. "Don't you feel better?"

"Mhm," she murmurs. "Ah, right there."

He presses his fingers to the spot she points out, and she gives a little sigh, pliant in his arms. "You're so good," she says softly, so quiet that he almost doesn't hear.

"Aw, you can just thank my mom."

Quinn laughs. "For raising you up right?"

"Raisin'. We're from Kentucky."

"Raisin'. Right, sorry."

Winding his arms around her burgeoning waist, Sam leans his chin on her shoulder, his cheek against hers. "I know you can do anything you want to do," he tells her, and she closes her eyes, pressing against him. "If you want to write this play, then you'll do it, and it will be amazing. You'll get, like, Meryl Streep to be in it."

"And Morgan Freeman?"

"He can be the narrator, of course."

She smiles and picks up one of his hands, cradling it between her own for a moment, pressing a kiss to his palm. "You don't think you're a little biased?"

"No," Sam says flatly, seriously, and pulls his hand away, shifting off the bed to kneel at her side so she can see the earnestness in his face. "I love you, but that doesn't make you any less talented, or any less passionate or driven. Quinn, I've seen you act, and I would think you were fantastic even if I wasn't some poor lucky sap you happened to fall in love with and marry."

The way he is now, on his knees in front of her, reminds him of the day he proposed. It's still hard for him to fathom, over a year later, that she said yes.

He'd held up the blindfold—well, a scarf, but still—when she opened the door to her apartment in New Haven, where she'd been living since graduating college about thirteen months earlier, and she raised an eyebrow, a silent question. Sam only shrugged and smiled.

"I saw this in a horror movie yesterday," Quinn said, even as she turned around and let Sam wrap the scarf around her eyes. "It didn't end well."

"No Freddie's, Jason's, or Michael's, I promise," Sam assured her, taking her hand and leading her carefully down the porch steps. "Just me."

Quinn's smile, beneath the makeshift blindfold, reminded him of the Cheshire cat from _Alice in Wonderland_—a perfectly white half-moon grin, floating beneath the tartan of the scarf. He went to kiss her cheek, and unerringly, she turned her head and his lips ended up landing square on hers.

He drove them to a broad, green clearing just off the highway, cut off from view by a line of trees on one side and cupped by a small manmade lake on the other. They'd come here the first time Sam had visited her at Yale, spreading a blanket in the middle and sharing a picnic. He can still taste the strawberries, remembers the juice running down his chin, how she leaned over to lick it off and made him laugh.

Parking at the edge, Sam reached in and pulled her out of the car, into his arms. She shrieked, looping her arms around his neck, emitting little squeaks of alarm when his stride tilted and wobbled as he made his way over the uneven ground.

He can't quite recall pulling out the box or getting down in the requisite position, down on one knee, or how her hand came to be in his. But he remembers the feel of her fingers, pressing against his palm, how he could feel her pulse fluttering as his thumb stroked the soft, delicate skin of her wrist.

He remembers telling her he loved her no less than six times.

Quinn crooks her finger at him, and Sam perches on the bed beside her, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. "I know you can do this, Quinn, and when you have moments of doubt—just ask me, and I'll remind you."

"No matter how many times I whine about it?"

"No matter how many times you whine about it."

/

**Week 20**

Quinn

When Sam broaches the topic of the cabin, she's chopping carrots for soup, and doesn't hear him over the sharp click of the knife against the cutting board.

"Q?" he prompts, and she sets the knife down, wiping her hands on her shirt.

"I'm sorry, baby, what was that?"

Sam, washing potatoes, dumps them on a wad of paper toweling and stands there, fingers dripping into the sink, and says, "I was thinking we could, uh, go up to the cabin near the Adirondacks. The one you got from your mom's mom?"

Her grandmother passed away in 2012, leaving them a gorgeous two-story cabin with soaring glass windows in the living room and the bedroom above it, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains in New York state. They'd been a couple of times in the last six years, and Quinn had always loved it.

"Um," Quinn says, transferring the carrots to the pot in her cupped hands, "why?"

He shrugs, a shy, self-conscious lift of his shoulders, as he begins to peel the potatoes. "I mean, I thought it would be easier for you to work on your play," he says slowly, focusing more than necessary on his work. "And, you know…"

Stirring the carrots into the broth, Quinn says, "You're just worried about the break in."

In between plays, the NHTC held auditions in a different theater from the one they performed in, a smaller space next door to convenience store. Quinn had been down there last week, auditioning for a play they were looking to put on next winter, when the store had been held up.

Her husband slices the potatoes into sticks, then cubes, his eyes cast down. "I mean, I guess," he mumbles.

Quinn wraps her arms around him from behind, laying her cheek against his back. "Baby," she says, "that was seriously one time. I'm sure—"

She can feel when he tenses up, and, when he speaks, his voice is sharper than it was only a few seconds ago. "It just takes one time, Quinn."

He steps away from the sink and she lets go of him, feeling strangely bruised. "Sam…"

Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, Sam twists off the cap and tags a swig before turning back to her. "I—I almost lost you once," he says quietly, far too quietly, and her chest constricts. "It was too close, okay?"

"Okay," she says, and moves out of the kitchen, ascending the stairs as fast as her stomach will allow her.

"Where are you going?" Sam's voice drifts from the kitchen, and she shouts back to him.

"Packing!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Week 23**

Sam

He's the oldest of three children, but the fourth of ten total grandchildren, and he can remember countless crowded, elbow-brushing Thanksgivings, Christmases bright with tinsel and carols on the radio and twinkling lights—it Christmas when he was thirteen that he first fell in love with the guitar, the moment he ripped the wrapping paper away and held the Gibson Custom in his hands.

Sam knows, of course, that not everyone has a family like his. His best friend at his old school, Jude, had never even met his father, and his neighbor's parents had divorced when the kid was four. But still, there was always love, somehow, there was always light and laughter and the knowledge of being precious, part of a whole.

It's something that has always broken his heart about Quinn. At first, he was honestly envious of her large house, the sleek double-door refrigerator humming in the kitchen, the big screen TV that looked as though it cost more than Sam's own house. But after coming over a few times, when he noticed how her parents were never home, how their footsteps sometimes echoed when they climbed the stairs, his chest would begin to ache as he drove home.

As she snoozes in the passenger seat of their car, her book drooping in her hands, he wonders about her father. Quinn resembles Judy so strongly that it's easy to forget about Russell entirely, especially since she almost never talks about him, and Sam doesn't bring him up.

He saw him once, at a distance, and didn't even realize who he was until he mentioned it to Quinn later. His father had gone on a trip to Cincinnati looking for work, and asked Sam to come with him for company on the drive.

They had stopped at a Stop'n'Shop to refuel, and Sam had spotted a stocky man pushing a grocery cart laden with frozen dinners and beer. There had been something oddly familiar about his stride, about the way his eyebrows beetled together when he concentrated, reading the nutritional facts on a box of Nutri-Grain bars.

The only reason he even mentioned it to her was because the man had been wearing a McKinley High sweatshirt, and Sam said it was surprising to see someone from Lima in the city, since it already seemed to him like most people never left.

"It was obvious that he'd been going there a lot, though," he said, as Quinn flipped through channels on that massive TV, the two of them curled together on the couch. "The cashier knew him by name. Russell."

The way she froze reminded him of the antelope from the nature documentary they'd been watching in Biology class that week—only her eyes moved, widening, the honey color of her irises standing out against the sudden ashy pallor of her skin.

"I think," she said slowly, "you saw my dad."

He makes the turn up the driveway, which is more of a long, winding dirt track off the highway up to the house, which threads up through a thick forest of pines until eventually the roof of the house protrudes above the tree line.

Sam parks in front of the house, and is struck again by the grandeur—the picture window of the living room, the glass wall of the bedroom above it that faces the trees, which crowd close to the house, so that it seems like they're the only two people in the world. He hops out of the car and carefully closes the door so that he doesn't wake her, opening up the backseat and leaning in to gather the basic supplies—meat, dairy, bread, snack foods like Doritos and powdered donuts that Quinn has been craving—that they brought with them.

He fishes the key out of his pocket, one that his wife had given him the first time they'd been at the cabin. He puts the groceries away, heading up to the bedroom to put fresh sheets and blankets from the linen closet on the bed. By the time he goes back down to the car, Quinn is sitting up and unbuckling her seatbelt. She raises an eyebrow at him through the passenger side window, and he raises one back.

"Baby, I thought you were going to let me drive," she says, when he opens the door for her.

"I was," he says easily, leading her up to the house. "But you looked so cute when you were sleeping. You did that little, uh, snuffling sound and I just couldn't stand to wake you up."

She playfully swats his arm. "I don't snore!"

"I didn't say snore. I said _snuffle._"

"I don't snuffle, either."

"Of course not, babe."

She bumps the door shut with her hip and pads to the kitchen, where she opens a bag of Doritos and plops down on the couch. Sam grins. "Hungry, Q?"

Sticking her Dorito-spotted tongue out at him, Quinn pats the cushion next to her and Sam drops into the spot, draping his arm around her shoulders, and she snuggles into him. He smiles faintly, without really thinking about it, and turns his head to press his lips against her hair.

After they stay like that for a while, Sam thinks she's fallen asleep again, but then she looks up at him, and her eyes are too bright. He sits up, keeping his arm around her, trying to look into her face. "Quinn? What's wrong? Are you in pain?"

"No," she says, but he only relaxes by a few degrees, because she's still clearly upset and he can't relax until he fixes it. "It's just—God, you're going to be the best father, you know that?"

He can't help it—his head tilts and his brow furrows, his mouth almost pouting, and he knows he looks like a puppy when he does this, because Quinn has made this comment approximately a thousand times. "Is that—a bad thing?"

She giggles, and he realizes, once again, that these aren't tears of grief or sadness. "Of course not," she says, and puts her palm against his cheek, and he softens against the warmth of her skin. "I'm just—I can't believe how lucky I am."

"And how lucky _you _are," she adds, directing this to her stomach, and Sam laughs, feeling a rush of giddiness at the way she casually addresses their baby. "Whoever you are, in there."

"I still like…what was it that I came up with this morning?"

"Renaldo."

"Yeah!"

"No."

"It's cute. It's unique."

"No, Samuel."

"Come on! We could call him Ren. Like the bird."

"First of all, wren has a silent 'w' in it. Secondly, Renaldo is a boy's name, and we're—"

Quinn stops talking and Sam can feel his eyes widening. They hadn't really talked about whether or not they would wait to find out the gender of their baby, but he knows that Quinn had an appointment before they left, while he was wrapping things up for the duration of their vacation at the Tower.

"Having a girl?" he says, too loudly, like he always does when he's excited, and he rocks onto his knees, balancing precariously on the couch cushions. "We're going to have a daughter?"

She laughs and holds out her hands to steady him. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, we are."

He's not exactly crying, but he makes this strange, hobbled sob of a sound in the back of his throat, even though he's smiling, and he curls up against her, turning his head so that his face rested inches away from Quinn's stomach.

"I love you, little girl," he says softly, and he feels Quinn's fingers threading themselves through his hair, over and over again. "I can't wait to meet you."

They stay like this for so long that Quinn actually does fall asleep again, and as he carefully carries her to bed, tucking her in, her hand snags his wrist. "Cecilia."

"What's that, babe?" he says, leaning closer to her.

"Cecilia. I want to name her Cecilia."

"Okay," he says. "Cecilia. I like it."

She closes her eyes, and he slides into bed after her, sliding his arm around her shoulders and placing one palm against her stomach. "Cecilia," he says, slowly, as if it's a piece of chocolate that can melt on his tongue. "Cecilia…"

"Judith."

"Cecilia Judith Evans."

His wife smiles, and he kisses her forehead. When he wakes up the next morning, he realizes that Quinn has curled up around her stomach, tucking her head beneath his chin, so that the three of them—Quinn, Sam, and their daughter—fit together like a puzzle.

/

**Week 23**

Quinn

Sometimes, when her mind wanders in the shower or in those slow, cottony moments just before or after sleep, she looks back at the glaring differences between the first time she had sex and the first time she had sex with _Sam._

Puck, for all the faults he had back then, hadn't been rough or heavy-handed with her. Even so, it had been rough, fast, his hips moving so rapidly that she felt her own body scooting back against the bed. By the time it was over, her body ached in the most surprising places—her back, her breasts, her thighs. And then he'd rolled right out of bed, pulling on his clothes as he casually threw, "See you at school", over his shoulder.

By stark, startling contrast, Sam was shy, sweetly uncertain, sliding his palms over her skin as if he thought even the gentlest touch would bruise. He kissed her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the entire universe, as if she was this star that had bloomed in his hands, a source of light in a world gone pitch black. Afterward, there wasn't an inch of space between their bodies; he kissed her and ran his fingers through her hair, and looked at her as though he would never get enough of seeing her face.

She wakes up their first day in the cabin to the smell of sizzling bacon, and she goes downstairs to find Sam slipping half a serving scrambled eggs from the skillet to the plate, bacon cooking in the pan on the next burner. "Hi, baby," she says, and he turns, wiping his hands off on a dishtowel before he pulls her into his arms.

"Hello," he murmurs, kissing her on the forehead. "How'd you sleep?"

"Very good," she assures him. "Is the bacon extra crispy?"

Sam pretends to be greatly offended, turning his head as though she'd slapped him, pulling his mouth up into a melodramatic pout. "Who do you think I am? Who am I making this bacon for?"

She giggles. "Of course. No, I'm sorry. I should have known."

"You should be sorry."

Quinn tips up on her toes for a kiss, wobbling on the descent because of her belly. She rests a hand on it, and looks up when Sam lays his over hers. "How's Cecilia doing?" he asks, and she smiles up at him.

"Pretty good," she says. "She wants some extra crispy bacon, though."

"Like mother, like daughter."

She moves her hand before he moves his, and as a result, his palm is still pressed against her stomach when the baby kicks. Her husband's face lights up as if someone has put the keys of heaven straight into his hands, and he looks at her, his smile impossibly and flawlessly sunny.

"Was that—?"

"Yep."

He lets out a soft _huh _of air. "That's our baby."

"Yep."

Her husband drops a kiss on her mouth. "I'm so happy."

"I know, baby. Me too."


	6. Chapter 6

**Week 26**

Sam

About three weeks into their stay, Sam wanders through the whole house without being able to find his wife. He hurries into the bedroom so fast that he almost trips over his own feet, his head swimming and heartbeat roaring like a waterfall in his ears, even as he tries desperately to listen for sounds of Quinn in distress or pain. He tries to think if heard a crash or a cry, something that would slip through the cracks in the floor to alert him, but he doesn't think he heard anything.

"Quinn?" he calls, his voice strangled and twisted into virtual nothingness by panic until he clears his throat and tries again. "_Quinn?_"

He doesn't even notice the closet door is open until she pokes her head out of it. "What?"

Sam pads over to the closet, pulling the door open all the way to find his wife sitting on the floor of the roomy walk-in, the overhead light glowing through old coats and folded blankets, with photo albums scattered around her like detritus after a storm and looking up at him as if this is perfectly normal behavior. He kneels down next to her, pulling an album onto his lap and flipping it open to see a picture of Quinn at thirteen, with bruises still barely visible beneath her eyes and her new blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight.

They weren't together when the Lucy Caboosey storm broke, but he was the one she happened to turn to for comfort, nonetheless. It wasn't that she had come to him specifically, but rather as a complete accident—as she was barreling down the hall, the poster still clutched in her hands, she'd crashed into him with such force that she bounced off of him like a rubber ball against a wall, landing flat on her ass, at which point she balled up the poster, threw it against the bank of lockers at her left, and burst into tears.

The fact that she'd cheated on him, breaking his heart so badly that he hadn't eaten or slept for days, and had needed to stuff the corner of his pillow to muffle his own sobbing at night for two weeks, didn't matter in that moment. All he saw was this beautiful, fantastic girl, this girl he loved, still loved, would always love, completely devastated, and so he did the only thing he could think of to fix it.

Sam sat on the floor next to her, put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him and let her cry into his chest. He rubbed her back unthinkingly, like his mom always used to do with him, his palm moving in big, broad circles as her breath hitched and came out in gasps, and his collar became damp.

"It's okay," he remembers saying, over and over, even though his voice was growing hoarse from repetition, even though he wasn't even sure what was wrong. "It's okay, it's okay."

After a while, she looked up at him, hazel eyes red and swollen, wiping the back of one hand against her cheeks. "Why are you being so nice to me?" she asked quietly, and he couldn't help but smile at her.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he said, and she tilted her chin up to kiss his cheek.

Now, he flips through pages, going backward so Quinn becomes younger and younger. The album begins when she was four or five, a dark-haired child with bright hazel eyes, grinning cheekily at the camera, perched on a young Russell's shoulders.

It's lifted out of his hands, balanced on Quinn's palms as she looked at it. "That was when he took me and my sister to the baseball game," she says quietly, her eyes hooded by shadows in the dim light. "He told that story the day he kicked me out."

He takes the album away from her, pushing the one in her lap away, too, so that he can move her into his own arms. "I'm sorry, beautiful girl," he murmurs into her hair, hands stroking up and down her thighs. "I wish there was something I could do."

Quinn tilts her face back to look at his face, one hand coming up to gently move through his hair. "I know," she assures him, a faint, faded smile on her face. "I know."

Later, when she's sleeping in their bed again, Sam pulls up Google on his laptop and types in a name, hoping it will be enough.

/

**Week 26**

Quinn

She's halfway through her play now, and she's surprised at how fast it's come together, and how the characters have become real people to her, parts of her that exist beneath her own personality like fish swimming beneath the frozen ice of a pond. Quinn spends most of her time writing while Sam is curled in bed next to her, reading or working on his own computer, but sometimes, she'll read out a scene she's just written, and he'll draw them for her.

Sam is a wonderful businessman—he's smart, charismatic, and he loves comic books with a ferocity that is completely endearing to her. But she sometimes thinks that he's wasting talent, whether as a musician or as an artist. He draws Alice, the heroine of her play, as if he's seen her himself, walking down the street, and just as Quinn herself has pictured her.

"It's your talent, baby, not mine," he insists, as she brings the pad of her thumb gently over the latest drawing. "You bring her to life so well, I can't help but see her."

She leans over, kisses him on the temple, tucking the drawing into a binder that she's keeping all the things for the play in—rough drafts, the print out of the first three acts, Sam's illustrations. She's thinking of including them if the play is ever put into print, and certainly would love to include them in the playbill, if it gets that far.

The play follows Alice, a young girl who is in a devastating car accident, who feels a massive disconnect from her family, and has an out-of-body experience that allows her to see what life will be like if she dies. It's morbid subject matter, Quinn knows this, but they say to write what you know, and she certainly knows about toeing the line with death.

Sometimes, she snaps awake at midnight or two a.m. or later, the screech of brakes ringing in her ears like a scream, broken glass showering down around her. She'll look over at her sleeping husband and be soothed by his solidity, how very _there _he is, with his broad shoulders, the long line of his back, the way he'll wake up at her slightest touch, attune to her.

Her last memory before the accident is the bugle sound of the truck's horn. Her first memory after the accident is seeing the top of Sam's head, blonde hair ruffled, as he slept against her hospital bed with his face pressed against her thigh so that the weave of the blanket was imprinted on his cheek. She'd touched the pale pink lines and divots visible just beneath his eye, absently lifting up the blanket to match the weave to the marks, and he'd woken up.

"Quinn?" he murmured, lifting his head, blinking at her as if he fully expected her to vanish with the phantasmagorical ease of a dream or a ghost. "Baby?"

She remembers how strange and rubbery her lips felt, as if they had once been connected to her face but weren't completely on there anymore. When she spoke, the words seemed to fall out of them like overripe fruit from a tree. "What—happened?"

He folded her free hand—the one without the IV threaded into it—up in both of his, lifting it to his lips before he said, "You were in a really bad car accident, but—you're going to be okay, Quinn. I promise."

Quinn wonders now if he even realized he was crying as he spoke to her, tears slipping silently down his cheeks as if they were nothing but rain streaking down a window. "Oh my God," he murmured, almost whimpering. "Oh God, Quinn…"

She can't recall if she invited him onto the bed or if he simply crawled up there, but they ended up curled together, her arms around him, cradling him close to her as he cried. She'd never noticed before then how much of Sam there was, because there had always been more room somehow, but now he was pressed so tightly against her that it felt like he wanted nothing more than to blend with her, until they were one person.

"I was so scared," he kept saying, a broken record that pierced her heart with every repetition; the pain in his voice was almost unendurable. "I was so scared, I was so scared."

"I know," she said.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"I love you," she said.

It was the first time Quinn had ever said this to him, and it was enough to slow the tumult of words spilling from his mouth, and he looked up at her. "You—?"

"I love you," Quinn repeated, bringing one hand up to move his dampened hair out of his face. "I love you, Sam Evans."

He made this strange, sweet sound that was a hybrid sob, hiccup, and laugh. "I love you, too."

Now, she touches his cheek gently with her fingertips, and he smiles at her, completely open. The thing she fell for first was this smile, this sweet, angelic smile that can shift and warm, curling up at one corner and lighting a fire in the pit of her stomach that can spread like wildfire through dry brush. Sam curves his palm to her neck, his thumb moving in circles over her collarbone.

At first, these little displays of affection unnerved Quinn, made her feel as though someone was setting some sort of trap around her. She hadn't been used to it—her father rarely hugged her, her mother occasionally kissed her cheek or smoothed her hair, though she had become more affectionate after Russell left. It was as if there was some unspoken rule in her house that prohibited letting someone peer through the cracks in your armor, which meant constantly keeping them at arms' length, even if what you wanted was to pull them closer.

By this point in their marriage, though, she leans easily into his palm, so used to the temperature of his skin that it is just like tilting her face up to the sun. When she comes home from work, or when he does, they gravitate toward each other, needing to be close to each other—sliding her palm across his back, his arm encircling her waist, a silent choreography that spoke volumes after six years together.

She settles against his shoulder, her head resting against him, and he turns his head to press his lips briefly against her hair. "I'm crazy about you, you know that?" he murmurs, and she smiles.

"Mhm," she says. "I know."

Sam gently moves his fingers up and down her arm for a few minutes, and before she knows it, she's drifted off. She's startled into wakefulness in the middle of the night as she feels her husband's body quake against hers, hears his fitful whimpering, before she understands what is happening.

Somehow, over the past few years, it never occurred to her that she may not be the only one who has nightmares.

"Baby." Quinn rocks her husband's shoulder, almost shouting. "Sam!"

He startles, eyes flying open, and when he focuses on her, he lets out what is undeniably a sigh of relief. "Hi," he says, hoarsely, his Adam's apple bobbing frantically in his throat as he swallows a few times. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

She barely swallows a snort. Sam is the only person she knows who apologizes for having a nightmare.

"No," she murmurs, snuggling down against him and laying her head against his chest. "It's okay, baby."

"It's okay," Sam echoes quietly, and after this, they both sleep through the night.


	7. Chapter 7

**Week 32**

Sam

It takes longer than he thought it would to find Quinn's father.

For one thing, the name "Russell Fabray" initially brings up articles from the _Lima News, _most of which are at least five or six years old. Some of the accompanying pictures include Judy, her arm stiffly around his side, her hair bleached white by the flashbulbs. A rare few include Quinn, too, polished and beautiful, wearing neat baby doll dresses and her hair in her old Cheerios ponytail.

For another, even when he does find an address in Cincinnati, it turns out that Russell hasn't lived there for over eighteen months. But a few e-mails back and forth with his former landlord lead Sam to his father-in-law's—which is a strange term to apply to Russell, since he's never actually met the man—current e-mail address, and a phone number.

He thought about lying to get the information, but it didn't seem right, as if he were sowing bitter seeds by starting this reunion off with a lie. And, if he's being honest, Sam Evans is a terrible liar, even via e-mail, and so he simply went with the truth.

_My wife has been estranged from her father for years, _he wrote, _and she's about eight months pregnant a baby of our own. I've never come face to face with Russell, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure if my wife wants to see him. But I'd rather try to start building the bridge now than look back later and realize that the chasm is too wide and too deep to cross._

A few days later, he received a reply with Russell's information, and opened and closed the e-mail several times a day, not entirely sure what to do with it now that he had it. Like he'd told the former landlord, he didn't really know if Quinn wanted any contact with her father at all, except for brief moments like the one with the photo albums, or on the couch a few years before—even when she smiled, there was a bleakness to it that reminded him of a field that had been stripped of wheat, a sadness that dug like splinters into his heart whenever he saw it.

Quinn is in the shower now; he can hear the water falling, an accompaniment to her familiar voice, singing what he believes to be "Buenos Aires" from _Evita. _He opens up a new e-mail, typing in Russell's address, and then becoming stuck the second he reaches the subject line.

What does he say?

"I'm married to your daughter, and we're having a baby, so I thought she might like to get in touch with you"?

He types tentatively, beginning with, "My name is Sam Evans" and stops there, the cursor blinking at him as if with impatience.

"My name is Sam Evans, and your daughter, Quinn, is my wife. I know you haven't spoken in a few years, but I would at least like you to know that we're having a baby."

This is pretty much all he wanted to say in the e-mail, so he copies and pastes the part after his name and drops it into the body of the e-mail. He bites his lip, a habit of anxiety that he's picked up from Quinn, and adds—

_I haven't talked to Quinn about this, and I'm not sure if she's open to seeing you, but I want to meet you myself. My wife, your daughter, is an exceptional woman, and I would like to tell you about her. And, if you don't mind, I would like to ask you a few questions about why you felt the need to_

Sam stops, because the sentence he has in mind is, "I would like to ask you a few questions about why you felt the need to abandon your daughter", and this is probably too judgmental for the first time he contacts Russell Fabray.

There's a part of him that nurses resentment for this man that is a perfect stranger to him, just because he knows full well how much his actions, or his lack thereof, have hurt Quinn. Maybe if he hadn't had the family he grew up with, he would understand a little more, but Sam thinks that there is just an inherent part of himself that knows, no matter what, he would never just walk away from his family.

He thinks of his own daughter, not even born yet, and tries to picture her. In his mind's eye, he pictures a little girl who looks like Quinn, like Beth does, but with his own eyes, if only because he knows how much his wife loves them. He tries to think of her at sixteen, sitting next to a faceless boy on some blurred couch, confessing that she's pregnant.

It would feel like a punch in the stomach, he's sure—the shock alone would feel as visceral as someone striking him—but he simply can't imagine turning away from his own child, even if he felt like they disappointed him. He knows you expect certain things from a kid, knows that a teenage pregnancy certainly isn't one of them, but isn't his wife living proof that you can turn your life around from almost any point?

Going back to the e-mail, he types—

_And, if you don't mind, I would like to ask you a few questions about your past relationship with Quinn. She and I haven't talked about it much, but_

He hesitates, then forges on ahead, thinking that maybe full honesty may be the best he can do at this point—

_But I know it's something she thinks about often, and I would just like to talk about it with you. _

Sam adds his name to the end, even though it's in the subject line, and before he can hesitate any further than he already has done, he hits send. Right then, he hears the water cut off, and he automatically edges to his feet, listening for a shriek or a thumb that means Quinn might have fallen. But then she emerges from the bathroom, shrouded in a cloud of steam, wrapped up in a fluffy, sunshine-yellow robe that Sam bought her for Christmas.

They'd celebrated Christmas at the cabin a few weeks earlier. Judy, Frannie's family, and Sam's had driven up, and it was warm and cozy, one of the best Christmases Sam ever had—and he'd had a lot of good ones. There was a fire in the hearth, and Quinn had barely stopped laughing, and everyone was laying hands on her stomach and kissing her cheeks, and her happiness fed his so effectively that he felt sure it was going to burst.

He moves toward her, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling his nose beneath the collar of her robe, inhaling the fresh, warm scent of her skin. "God, you smell so good," he murmurs, lips brushing against her collarbone, and he smiles when he feels a light shiver pass through her. "I could just stand here and breathe you in forever."

She giggles, brushing her fingers through his hair. "Well, I aim to please," she teases.

Sam looks up at her, drawing his tongue across his lower lip lasciviously, just to make her laugh. "You always do, babe."

They're watching a movie a few hours later—_The Princess Bride, _one of their favorites—when Sam's laptop pings, announcing the arrival of a new e-mail. He waits until Quinn is in the kitchen, refreshing the popcorn, to check.

_Re: My name is Sam Evans._

/

**Week 32**

Quinn

Sam's hand steals into hers as she stands at the sink, washing dishes, his fingers spreading the suds across her palm so that the lines in her skin are turned white. She reaches with her free hand to turn off the faucet, tilting her head to look at him as he looks up at her beneath the golden fringe of his eyelashes.

"So my dad e-mailed you back, huh?" she says, and swears she can feel his pulse begin to race, and she doesn't have to look to know that his eyes are Bambi-wide.

"How did you, um—?"

She turns and pulls his other hand into hers, dipping her head to press their foreheads together. "Baby, you're a terrible liar, even when you're lying by omission," she tells him. "Every time I came near you when you were working on the computer, you twitched like a jack rabbit in front of a coyote."

Her husband bites his lip. "Are you—upset with me?"

At first, she'd just felt shock. Having easily guessed Sam's password—their wedding date—and calling up his sent e-mails, she didn't know why this would even matter to him. She'd rarely spoken of her father, and had tried her best to put him out of her mind, since she felt like that road had been torn to pieces a long time ago.

But then she'd read what Sam had sent to her father's landlord—"_But I'd rather try to start building the bridge now than look back later and realize that the chasm is too wide and too deep to cross._"—and she realizes that Sam may be more perceptive than anyone, even his own wife, gave him credit for.

"No," she murmurs. "Not at all."

He brings his chin up, and his lips meet hers. "I haven't read it yet," he says. "Do you want to read it with me?"

She nods, anxiety spilling into her stomach like waters through a broken dam. "Okay."

They sit on the couch, the laptop balanced between them, and she allows Sam to navigate the mouse for her, his finger gliding across the touchpad. He double clicks, and the five-second wait for the e-mail to open up seems to last a lifetime.

When it finally does, Quinn averts her eyes out of sheer nervousness, her gaze rolling away without her consent. She can feel her heart pounding in her throat as though someone has forcefully shoved it up out of her chest.

"Quinn," Sam says quietly, his hand already moving in broad, warm circles on her back. "We don't have to do this right now. We don't have to do this ever, actually."

"No," she answers, fighting with every muscle in her face to look back at the screen. "I just want to get this over with."

On the screen, her father's words seem to throb as through with a life of their own. She has to read them twice before they filter in any sensible way through her brain.

_Sam—_

_I would like to hear about Quinn, and I would like to meet you. I remember when she used to fantasize about her wedding day; back then, she was confident she was going to marry Prince Charming. So you must be one hell of a guy, if she's settled down with you. When is a good time to meet up?_

—_Russell_

She looks at her husband, gnawing on her lower lip until she feels a sharp prick of pain. Sam winces, puts his hand against her jaw and wipes the little bead of blood away with the pad of his thumb.

"Listen," he says, "I'll go meet with him, whenever. I'll talk to him, see if—"

Quinn smiles faintly. "If he passes the Sam Evans litmus test?"

He smiles at her in return. "I have to see if he's good enough for my girls, don't I?" he asks, laying his palm across Quinn's stomach.

"Okay," she says. "Okay."


	8. Chapter 8

**Week 34**

Sam

He's seen a few pictures of Russell, and there was that one time he saw him in the grocery store in Cincinnati, so it's not like he doesn't know what he looks like. But Sam is still surprised to see him, as if someone has pulled a character from a movie or a TV show and plopped him down across the table from him, the background of the crowded restaurant suddenly seeming fake, a moveable soundstage.

Sam elected to meet him a small local diner nestled in the town at the foot of the mountain range, roughly forty-five minutes from the cabin. He figured he could use the time on the drive back to figure out what to say to Quinn, about his thoughts on her father, about whether or not Russell was…worthy? Was that the right word?

Now, as he watches the man fiddle with the cutlery in front of him, Sam thinks that, yes, "worthy" is the right word. This is his family, the two most important people in his life, one of whom he hasn't even met yet but loves so fiercely that it feels like a small, second sun in his chest. He doesn't want to bring anyone into their lives that doesn't deserve them, especially someone who has been proven to be a disappointment before.

The more he looks at Russell, the more he sees Quinn, not so much in his features themselves but the quiet minutiae that play across them—the way he presses his lips into a thin line out of anxiety, the way he's fidgeting, not just with the silverware but his feet tapping on the floor, his eyes bouncing from object to object. They're the things he's used to seeing on Quinn's face, and it's jarring to see them anywhere else.

"So," Russell says, his voice rough, as if he hasn't used it in a while and it's become rusty with disuse. "Um…how is she?"

Smiling faintly, trying to be encouraging but unable to let go of the idea, the nagging burr digging into his brain, that this guy has made his wife cry, Sam says, "She's good. We're both really looking forward to the baby."

Russell doesn't quite smile. It's more like the corners of his lips twitch abortively, as if they're just too heavy to lift. "Yeah, I bet," he murmurs, his fingers dancing over the handle of his knife, spinning it rapidly on the table. "I remember Judy being pregnant with—with her. She was really happy. She, uh, she looked great."

At this, he looks up at Sam, his expression suddenly so hopeful that Sam feels this immense weight on his shoulders, as if he has the power to break this man. "Can I see a picture of her?"

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens up his pictures folder, scrolling to a picture that he took a few days before—Quinn in profile, standing by the wall of glass in the living room, her hands on her stomach, laughing at something Sam had said before snapping the photo. Tapping the screen so that the picture fills it, he pushes it across the table toward her father.

The man picks up the phone as if no more substantial than a bubble, like it will disappear in a second if he isn't careful enough with it. Sam turns his eyes away before Russell's eyes fall on the picture. It reminds him of this one time he went to church with Quinn and her mother, and they were holding a service for a woman whose son had been ill with leukemia, and had recently found out that he was in remission.

He remembers being unable to look her, because her joy was so full, so iridescent, that it was like looking directly into the sun.

Sam waits until Russell slides the phone back to him, and he takes a moment to look at the picture himself. He feels his smile take over his face before his mind is aware of it, and he lightly puts a fingertip to the surface of his phone, right over Quinn's cheek.

He's startled when the man across the table speaks, because he's honestly become so wrapped up in looking at Quinn that he forgot about him. "You really love her, don't you?"

Tucking his phone back into his pocket, Sam nods easily. "I really do."

Russell nods, looking back down at the table again. He's a broad-shouldered man, almost built like a bull, and though Sam tops him by a few inches, it isn't as though Russell Fabray is a delicate man. But now, he looks terribly small, as though grief and regret have the power to shrink you.

"What is she like?" he asks, his voice a mere thread of sound, barely able to reach Sam.

"She's the most incredible person I know," Sam tells him. "She's so, so smart. She's sweet and passionate and an amazing singer, even though she doesn't think so. She's a wonderful actress, and you can tell she loves it, which is the best part. She loves to read, and I love watching her read. She's my best friend."

Across the table, Quinn's father looks away again, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and Sam realizes that he's close to tears. "She doesn't talk about me a lot, you said?"

"No," Sam says, for the first time feeling pity creep into his heart. "But every girl needs her father, even if she doesn't admit to it."

Russell smiles briefly, a convulsion of his facial muscles, as if it's painful. "That's my Quinny," he murmurs, more to himself than to Sam.

They're silent for a little while, and then Russell asks, "Does she hate me?"

This quiet question, spoken with fear and what seems like desperation, throws Sam for a loop at first, and then just makes his chest hurt. "I don't know," he answers. "I think she's just hurt."

"Um," Russell says, now almost shy. "Do you think she'd want to see me?"

"I'll ask her," Sam tells him, and her father nods.

"Thank you."

They stand up, and Sam unthinkingly stretches out his hand, a habit drilled into him from childhood. Russell Fabray shakes his head firmly, and this too reminds Sam of his wife.

"I may have failed her in many respects as father," Russell says, "but I'm glad to see that she has someone like you taking care of her."

Sam smiles at him again. "I like to think we take care of each other."

/

**Week 34**

Quinn

At first, she tries to read, but her eyes slip over the words like a ship over the ocean. And then she straightens up the house, making the bed, wiping down the kitchen counters, unfolding and refolding the blankets, sheets, and towels in the linen closet. After that, she just paces restlessly back and forth across the living room, her phone clutched tightly in her hand in case Sam decides to call.

When she hears the scrape of his key in the front door, she drops onto the couch with an unwilling little whimper of anxiety. Sam's footsteps clomp down the hall, and Quinn's fingers entangle with each other as she feels his gaze on the back of her neck when he enters the living room.

"How'd it go?" she asks, her voice too high, too thin, and still she doesn't realize how tense she is until he sits next to her and his strong arms wind around her, and she relaxes into him.

His warm, familiar voice is in her ear, his hand rubbing up and down her arm. "Good," he says. "He wants to know if you'd like to see him."

She thinks about it for a few minutes, and then leans back just enough to look into Sam's face. "What do you think?"

He smiles at her, and she can't help but smile back. Dropping his lips to hers for a quick peck, Sam says, "He asked to see a picture of you, so I showed him the one earlier this week, the one where you were laughing by the window."

Quinn grins again, remembering that picture. She'd been looking out at the stunning view, and Sam had said, "How much did a pirate pay to get his ears pierced?"

Her lips twitched, already familiar with most of Sam's awful jokes, but this one was new. "How much?"

"A buck an ear."

"Anyway," Sam says now, "he saw me looking at it before I put it back in my pocket, and he said, 'You really love her, don't you?'"

She leans her head against his shoulder. "And what did you say?"

"'I really do.'"

Quinn snuggles closer to him. "What does that have to do with my dad, though?"

Sam presses a kiss to her hair before he answers her. "Anyone who can see how much I love you just from the look on my face should get a second chance, I think."

She nods. "I'll call him tomorrow."


	9. Chapter 9

**Week 36**

Sam

With his wife's due date any day now, Sam hovers around her like a moth to a flame, near enough to reach out a hand should labor start—which also means he's near enough to step on the back of her heels, bump into her in the hallway, and breathe so closely on the back of her neck that he stirs the fine hairs.

"Babe," she says, exasperated, after she's turned around to find him less than three inches behind her as she shrugs into her raincoat, flipping her thick blonde hair over the collar, her hands fluttering as Sam reached for her and buttoned her coat up to her throat. "Can't you just take a couple of steps back? Please?"

He feels heat creep into his cheeks, dropping his head and shuffling his feet against the floor. "Sorry," he says. "I just—worry about you. Even when you're not pregnant, but especially…"

Quinn takes his hands and places them against her stomach, her thumbs brushing gently over the backs of his hands. They stand there in silence for a few minutes until the baby gives a particularly fierce kick, so that it feels like someone has swung the mallet of a kettle drum into his palm.

"See?" she says, and when he looks up at her, she's smiling at him. "I'm fine. Cecelia's fine. Everyone is fine, okay?"

She leans forward, pecking him on the cheek, and Sam cups the back of her head with his free hand to keep her there. "I love you so much," he says quietly, turning his head until his lips brush against hers. "You're just so, so precious to me."

Quinn slides her arms around his waist, pulling him close as she can with the bulk of her belly between them, and he buries his face into her hair, inhaling the sweet scent of her that has always been able to calm him down, to soothe him. "I love you, too," she tells him, her breath falling on his collarbone, her mouth against the pulse point at the base of his throat.

Pulling back, she gently runs her fingers through his hair, sifting through the strands, and he closes his eyes with a little hum of contentment. He doesn't think he'll ever get tired of Quinn's touch, even the simplest caresses like this. Somehow, he always thinks of that one sonnet by Shakespeare, the really famous one where he asks, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It's like the warmth of a beautiful day in July has been imbued in her pores, comforting and sweet.

"Let's go," she says. "We're going to be late."

They're meeting Russell today, picking him up at the bus station and then coming back to the cabin for some privacy. He watches Quinn, partly for any sign of a contraction, but also for nerves or anxiety, but she seems fine to him, and he likes to think there are very few people who knows Quinn better that he does, who would be more alert to emotional cues.

Just in case, though, he lays his palm against the small of her back as they walk down the front steps, less to keep her steady and more as a source of comfort if she needs it. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "Are you sure you want to do this? We totally don't have to."

Quinn nods, her chin set in the way that reminds him of all her physical therapy sessions a few years ago, when she was finally getting motion back into her legs, dragging herself forward across the ramp with white-knuckled hands. He had known, he had always known, that she could do this, that she would walk again, but when her eyes had blazed like that, twin ferocious flames, he had been able to tell that she finally knew it, too.

"I'm sure," she murmurs, nodding to herself. "And—we do need to do this. At least, I do."

She stops halfway to the car, turning into the circle of his arm. "I wouldn't expect you to understand," she says, very gently. "Your parents have always loved you, and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. I would never, ever want you to feel the way I've felt because of my father. Your life hasn't been easy enough as it is."

He nods, looking away for a second. She wraps her fingers around his chin, turning his face back to hers, placing a soft kiss on his mouth. "I just have to see this through," she continues, fingertips brushing his cheek. "Even if nothing comes of it, at least I'll now that I tried everything in my power to fix this."

Sam brings his hand up to hers, pressing it against his skin, turning his lips into her palm. Sometimes, there are moments when Quinn is so beautiful that it takes his breath away, leaving him stunned into immobility. It wasn't just when she was dressed particularly nicely, like on their wedding day, or in the sleek cocktail dresses she wore to her cast parties—more often, it was times like this, brief moments where she stood still, gilded by sun or lamplight or the moon; simple, elegant beauty.

"I love you," he says again, and she smiles up at him.

"I know."

He helped her into the car, reaching around to pull the safety harness around her full stomach, kissing her lightly on the cheek as he pulled back. As he walks around the car, Sam has his ear cocked, poised to act at the first sign of calamity, but by the time he slides into the driver's seat, Quinn is still tranquil, leaning forward to fiddle with the radio dials.

A few chords into the fifth song they hear makes them both smile, and they both fall into their respective parts without thinking about it, as easy as finding the swaying rhythm of riding a bike or the muscle memory of a swimmer.

"Can you hear me? I'm talking to you, across the water, across the deep blue ocean, under the open sky. Oh my, baby, I'm tryin'…"

"Boy, I hear you in my dreams. I feel your whisper across the sea. Keep you with me in my heart, you make it easier when life gets hard…"

Sam carefully peels one hand off the wheel and reaches for hers, capturing it without needing to look. She squeezes his fingers gently between hers, and he lifts their entwined hands to his mouth, placing a kiss on her knuckles.

They sing along with the song, neither one of them forgetting a single word or note, and he thinks about how the song has only become more and more true. There are people he's close to, outside his family, that he considers very close friends—Puck, Mike, Blaine—but Quinn is his best friend, the one person he can tell anything to, the one who knows every single think about him, as if he's a book that he's read cover to cover, trawling through footnotes and appendixes.

When they pull up to the bus stop, her fingers tighten within his so painfully that he hears a few of his knuckles pop. His eyes follow hers to Russell Fabray, sitting on a bench with a leather backpack between his knees, his hands moving restlessly as they had in the diner—up and down his thighs, tangling and untangling with each other, coming up to the nape of his neck or the back of his head.

"Do you want me to go get him?" Sam asks, and mutely, Quinn nods.

He kisses her hand again, and then gets out of the car, keeping his hand down by his side as he flexes his fingers so that his wife won't see him trying to get the blood flow back through his hand. Russell looks up at he approaches, his forehead creasing.

"Is she okay?" he asks, shooting to his feet so fast that he almost topples his bag. "She hasn't gone into labor yet, has she?"

"No, no," Sam assures him, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. "She's in the car. She just—wanted to wait for you."

The man stands up, slinging the leather bag over his shoulder, and follows Sam back to the car.

/

**Week 36**

Quinn

Her heart jumps into her throat as she watches her father and her husband approach the car, and she faces forward as though her life depends on it when Russell slides into the seat behind her.

"Um," her father says, uncertainly, probably waiting for her to turn around. "Hi."

Sam gives her this sidelong glance that he usually employs when he asks if she's mad at him, his distinct mouth falling into a pout, and her eyes slide to meet his. "Are you okay?" he mouths, and she nods.

Quinn twists as much as her stomach and seatbelt will allow her, managing a weak smile. "Hi, Daddy."

Russell gnaws on his lip for a moment, uncertain, and then his face brightens into a hesitant smile. "I have something for you," he says. "Well, for the baby. But it, uh—you'll probably recognize this."

He reaches into the bag he brought with him and pulls out a small blanket. It's a little worn, but still thick and soft-looking — pink and lemon-yellow squares woven together, with initials embroidered on one corner in pink thread.

_L.Q.F._

"Quilty," Quinn murmurs, surprised, as her dad passes the blanket up to her and when Sam looks at her blankly, she adds, "I used to sleep with this. I couldn't get to sleep without it half the time."

She absently, unthinkingly, rubs the blanket against her cheek, the soft material as soothing as ever against her skin. The significance of this little blanket sinks in slowly, and she turns to her father, fingers tightening around the quilt.

"You kept this?" she asks. "All this time, you kept this?"

He nods, suddenly appearing like a lost, shy little boy, and she feels her heart soften. "Yeah," he says, his voice very soft. "I thought—I always wanted to be able to give this to you, to give to your kids. I don't know if it's a girl, but…the pink doesn't really matter, does it? Colors are, uh, gender neutral nowadays."

When she smiles at her father for the second time in seven years, it is warmer, more genuine. "It's a girl," she tells him. "We're thinking of naming her Cecilia Judy."

"Cecilia," Russell repeats, smiling at her with equal warmth. "I like that."

The carried home is surprisingly relaxed, Russell sharing stories from Quinn's childhood that she had half-forgotten.

"Once," he says, leaning forward comfortably now, "we were having dinner with Judy's mother, who's French, so we were having French cuisine, which obviously means we were having escargot—"

Sam laughs when Quinn's face registers her disgust. "I was _four,_" she says. "Okay? I was four. I wanted a cheeseburger, not snails."

"Trust me, I wasn't crazy about the snails, either," Russell assures her. "Anyway, so Quinny, yeah, she's four, and she's cranky, anyway, so she starts _throwing _them—and one lands in my mouth, right in my mouth. So she laughs, absolutely cracks up, and starts throwing more."

"I landed three others," Quinn says proudly.

The conversation scarcely ebbs even right onto the front door, at which point Quinn's water breaks all over the porch.

/

Sam

She gasps, just a quiet little sound, quieter than the breeze ruffling the pines, and Sam knows even before the liquid splashes onto his shoes. He's already cupping her elbow, turning her smoothly back toward the car, while he speaks to Russell over his shoulder, tossing him the key to the front door: "There's a bag in the hall closet, just inside. It has all the stuff we want to bring to the hospital in it. Can you grab that for us, please?"

He's surprised that he's this calm, since he always suspected that he'd be a nervous wreck when it came time for Quinn to go into labor. But now that it's actually happening, now that she's gripping his hand so tightly that he can practically feel the bones shifting like tectonic plates, now that her face is already crumpling with pain, Sam finds that there isn't time for him to be freaking out. His wife needs him, pure and simple; that's the only thing he's letting himself focus on.

Because he can't think about how, ever since the accident, hospitals make him feel like his chest is collapsing, like he's a marionette with its strings cut—weak and out of control, stumbling forward without any hope of purchase or safety.

He is aware of Russell at his shoulder, and is surprised to see that when her father reaches for her free hand, she takes it. "Ow," she whimpers, her voice ratcheting up into a shrill whine. "Oh my God, I actually forgot just how much this hurt."

Russell and Sam hustle her into the back of the car, and they both hesitate, each wanting to be in the backseat with her.

"I'll drive," her father says, and Sam nods, tossing him the keys and sliding into the backseat with his wife.

"Hold my hands," he says, offering them both to Quinn. "Squeeze when it hurts."

"Okay," she answers, breathless, sweat already standing out at her hairline. "Oh God, Sam…"

"I know, angel," he murmurs, gripping her hands tightly between his, bending his head to kiss her forehead. "I know, I know."

They're winding down the road, following the highway signs to the hospital, and Quinn's breathing is becoming more rapid, more anxious. Sam releases her hands to carefully frame her face, brushing her hair back from her face, stroking her cheeks.

"Babe, you need to breathe," he says, bending her head toward his so that their foreheads touch. "Okay? You need to breathe. I'm right here. Look at me."

"It hurts," she says, in a heart-wrenchingly small voice, and she squeezes her eyes shut tightly as another contraction hit her. "Oh, _God._"

Her pain has always been reflected in Sam, no matter what the cause—whether it was the day they broke up, when the shock and hurt in her eyes had been driven into his chest as surely as a bullet; or the first time she woke up after the accident, hazy and drifting far away on a tide of pain meds. Sam tries to smile at her, tries not to let it show. He lifts her hands to his lips again for another kiss.

"We're almost there," Russell says, and Sam squeezes Quinn's hands gently.

"Almost there," she echoes, closing her eyes. "Okay."

By the time they pull up in front of the emergency room, Quinn's face is flushed and Sam's hands feel as though they've been slammed in car doors. Russell runs inside and returns ten minutes later, an orderly pushing a wheelchair on his heels. "Here," he's saying, gesturing to the car. "They're right here."

Sam helps Quinn into the wheelchair, gripping her hand tightly as they wheel her into the hospital. His fingertips are starting to ache and tingle now, but by the time Quinn is settled in a bed, they finally give her an epidural, and she's able to relax.

"Better?" he asks, and she smiles, leaning her head against the pillows.

"Much."

"What now?" he says, more to himself than to anyone else, but Russell, sitting on the other side of Quinn's bed, just laughs.

"Now, we wait."

/

Quinn

Her first baby arrived so quickly that she expects this second child to be just the same, but it takes for hours of labor until it's time to push.

Sam props her up, one arm around her shoulders, gripping her hand fiercely in his. Contractions sink their teeth into her stomach like a lion gripping her between its jaws, sinking its long, razor-sharp teeth in. She sets her jaw to keep from screaming, feeling the heat building in her cheeks, and the doctor, settling between her legs, nods at her. "It's time to start pushing, Mrs. Evans."

Quinn bears down, losing all track of anything else except her own body and the baby that she is working to bring into the world. Her focus turns completely inward, her heartbeat echoing in her ears, the doctor's voice filtering slowly and dimly into her consciousness, the warmth of Sam's hand, the sensation of his lips at her temples, her cheek, drifting through to her as though through a veil.

"Okay," the doctor is saying, "one more. One more, a big one."

There is a rushing sensation, as if she's falling apart at high speed, and then—

A cry, breaking the seal between her old life and the new, a beginning.

/

**Eleven Months Later**

Sam

Quinn rolls over, nuzzling his shoulder. "Merry Christmas," she murmurs, and tilts her face up for a kiss, which he deposits lightly on her mouth.

"Merry Christmas."

Their eyes both go to it at the same time as the baby monitor lets out a brief burst of static, followed by a sleepy series of croons and coos. Sam is out of bed first, and by the time he reaches the hall, his wife is next to him, her hand sliding easily into his.

The door to their daughter's room is slightly ajar, as always, and Sam pushes it all the way open with his free hand. Cecelia waves her perfect, minute hands from beneath the fleece blanket Judy sent them after she was born, printed with fluffy little lambs.

"Hi, angel," Sam says softly, wrapping his baby up in the blanket and cradling her against his chest.

Even now, almost a year later, he is still overwhelmed with how much he loves this flawless, sweet little creature. He presses light kisses to her plump cheeks, and he feels Quinn's arms wrap around his waist, her mouth brushing gently against the curve of his neck.

Cecelia blinks up at him, those large blue eyes that Quinn wanted her to inherit fastening on his face with a fantastic recognition. It boggles Sam's mind that she knows who she is, that she recognizes him, that he'll be the person she'll call _Daddy _for the rest of her life. He didn't think he could love anyone as much as he loves Quinn, but this is a transcendent emotion, more than love, more than devotion.

His daughter reaches up and places her tiny palm against his cheek. "Da."

Sam's mouth drops open, and he feels Quinn's laughter vibrate against his back. He looks over his shoulder at her, clutching their baby tighter.

"She said—"

"I heard her, sweetheart."

"Da," Cecelia says again. "Da-da."

"Yeah," Sam murmurs, his throat closing even as a smile spreads across his face. "That's me."


End file.
